HERE'S a challenge for swimwear designers. Britain's advertising watchdog last week banned a series of television commercials featuring bikini-clad women because they were offensive to Muslims. Stand by for the burqini, a fetching one-piece ensemble made entirely of black hessian, measuring 2m in length and equipped with a small vent through which women can stick their snorkel.Also in Britain, the Fox network has agreed to demands from the Muslim Council of Britain for talks over a BSkyB drama depicting middle class Muslims as members of a terrorist sleeper cell. Just where do television executives dream up such fantasy? Unless they were aiming for an accurate account of that September 11 hiccup, where middle class Muslims who were members of a terrorist sleeper cell murdered 3000 innocent people.
Again in Britain, a search and rescue service near the town of Preston had last week its funding slashed when authorities discovered it hadn't rescued enough ethnic minorities. It wasn't that the Bowland and Pennine Mountain Rescue Team had done nothing while minority folk lay stranded at the bottom of cliffs. In fact, it soon emerged there hadn't actually been any to rescue. But that's hardly the point.
And on Sunday, the Home Office confirmed it was considering a request, again from the Muslim Council of Britain, for this week's commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz to be made racially inclusive. Muslim leaders are threatening to boycott the event unless it acknowledges the holocaust of the Palestinian intifada.
In Britain, the cancer of political correctness seems all the more malignant, fuelled perhaps by the fabled determination of the Brits to be unfailingly polite. As a result, the country looks through Australian eyes like a multicultural worst-case scenario, where befuddled Poms tie themselves up in knots to address all sorts of ludicrous grievances and in doing so undermine the values which have made this country a beacon for democracy and free expression throughout the civilised world.
The above cases are almost comical. The biggest story of this past week involves a particularly nasty scumbag by the name of Omar Bakri Mohammed. His mere presence in Britain is offensive in itself, but his rabble-rousing conduct poses a very real (but unchallenged) threat to public safety. Bakris' case serves as a counterpoint to those who come over all weepy at the treatment of Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks, whose incarceration is held up as a shameful betrayal of Western liberal principles.
The Tottenham Ayatollah, as Bakri is known, was kicked out of Saudi Arabia in 1985 for being a member of an illegal organisation. Mystifyingly, the Brits rolled out the red carpet for a guy whose stated life aim is to see the Islamic crescent flag flying over 10 Downing Street. Not only did they let him in, the British taxpayers pay him, his wife and seven children some $750 a week in benefits, with Bakri also claiming an invalid pension of $125 a week, having injured his leg as a boy in Syria. He's even used the Koran to justify his status as a low bludger, saying that accepting welfare from Western governments was a way of weakening the infidel.
In return for this investment, the British people get regular outpourings of hate-filled bile. Bakri has called for the assassination of former prime minister John Major, praised the magnificent September 11 hijackers, and told rallies he can understand why young Muslim people would want to launch attacks in Britain. Last week, a powerful investigation by The Times established Bakri is now using an internet chatroom with some 80 British-based followers to go further. He called on young Muslims to become suicide bombers and declared Britain a Dar ul-Harb, the Arabic expression for State of War, explaining that non-Muslims had no sanctity for their own life or property. Police have subsequently launched an investigation but due to privacy considerations there has been no official public comment on an individual, as the authorities here refer to this fellow, not wanting to suggest he's actually done anything wrong.
Perversely, the terror laws which the British Government could use to act against Bakri and have used against Sheik Abu Hamzah, the almost fictitously evil radical cleric, who has two hooks for hands (which were blown off by a landmine) are under threat from, of all places, the judiciary. The courts, which represent the values which radical Islam wants to destroy, have ruled the new powers to detain terrorist suspects are unconstitutional and must be watered down.
What a crock. Bakri shows how the most accomplished fanatics can use Western liberal principles as a vehicle for their own brand of holy war, while we stand about agonising over the presumption of innocence, burden of proof, free association and unfettered public debate. The truth is that authorities will eventually spring into action to stop the likes of Bakri -- provided of course that he bombs something. Until then, it would be a betrayal of our liberal principles to do anything to a man who history may ultimately judge as a garrulous eccentric. What a lovely gamble to have to take.